LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Eros: Spacecraft
built 123 days ago
![[NEAR image of asteroid Eros]](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/e/r/o/eros/i/024.gif)
This view of the largest crater on Eros -- a mosaic of NEAR Shoemaker images taken Sept. 10, 2000, from an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) - offers a new perspective on the feature known as Psyche. The images were taken as the spacecraft flew directly over the 3.3-mile (5.3 kilometer) wide crater and its smaller sister craters, which align its rim and create a paw-like appearance.
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This sky chart shows the position of Eros and the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft during the beginning of January 2001. The constellations are shown for 8 pm local time as seen from a mid-northerly latitude. Eros is moving among constellations of the Zodiac -- moving from Aquarius into Pisces in February. Eros is very faint (14th magnitude), requiring an excellent backyard telescope for viewing. The chart ... shows the locations of several other asteroids and planets near Eros, low in the southwestern sky during evening.
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![[NEAR stereo image of asteroid Eros]](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/e/r/o/eros/i/026.gif)
On 12 February, 2000, the NEAR spacecraft obtained a sequence of 780 images of Eros from a range of about 1800 km (1100 miles). This sequence covered one complete revolution of the asteroid at 0.5 degree intervals. In these views of opposite hemispheres of the asteroid, groups of images slightly apart in time were digitally processed to bring out local details. The processed data showing Eros from slightly different perspectives can then be combined as anaglyphs or stereo pairs. The processing of the data highlights the topography of small-scale features, but makes the gross shape of the asteroid appear flattened.
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A case study of scientific exuberance in action is Robert Farquhar, of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and mission director of the Near Earth Asteroid Rendevous spacecraft, which in 2001 successfully landed on the asteroid Eros. "I can't understand why they pay me to do what I love," he told Dr Jamison. His enthusiasm gave him the staying power to persevere over the NASA bureaucrats, who would have been satisfied with a mere orbital mission. His colleague, Andrew Chen told Dr Jamison that exuberance endows one with the resiliency to handle inevitable rejections and bounce back, though he confessed it can ... scatter one's focus.
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![[NEAR images of asteroid Eros]](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/e/r/o/eros/i/027.gif)
NEAR Shoemaker took these images of Eros on October 16, 2000, while orbiting 54 kilometers (34 miles) above the asteroid. They are shown in false color, constructed from images taken in green light and two different wavelengths of infrared light. Surface materials that have been darkened and reddened by the solar wind and micrometeorite impacts appear as pale brown, whereas fresher materials exposed from the subsurface on steep slopes appear in bright whites or blues. Compared with Gaspra and Ida, similar asteroids imaged in color from the Galileo spacecraft, Eros exhibits large brightness variations but only subtle color variations.
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The U.S. spacecraft Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous–Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), launched in 1996, entered orbit around Eros in February 2000 and carried out extensive mapping and photographic studies of the asteroid. It revealed that the surface not only has craters but is covered with thousands of boulders and hundreds of flat-topped “ponds” of bluish dust. NEAR Shoemaker landed on the asteroid's surface in February 2001.
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